Americans continue to struggle with debt problems, to no great surprise. It's just not the same type of borrowing woes that got the country into trouble more than eight decades ago.

Debt isn't the only problem afflicting low- and moderate-income people right now. The widening rich-poor gap also is a function of broad underemployment, low-paying jobs and other issues. But many Americans owe more than they own, and the situation intensified during the recession and its aftermath.

A recent study from the Congressional Budget Office, using numbers previously reported by the Federal Reserve, puts some of this into perspective. "The share of families in debt ... remained almost unchanged between 1989 and 2007 and then increased 50 percent between 2007 and 2013," the report said, referring to households with overall negative net worth.

In 2007, 8 percent of households owed more than the value of assets they held, averaging $20,000 in the red. Six years later, that had climbed to 12 percent of households with a negative net worth, averaging $32,000. (For all Americans that year, personal assets exceeded borrowings by a median $81,000.)

Housing and student-loan debts have been the main problem areas lately. Among U.S. households that had a negative net worth in 2007, 56 percent had student-loan balances averaging $29,000. Six years later, that jumped to 64 percent of negative-worth households with student loans, owing $41,000 on average on these borrowings.

Housing debts have been worse. Only 3 percent of negative-worth families in 2007 had negative home equity too, averaging $16,000. But by 2013, 19 percent owed more on their mortgages than their homes were worth, with an average negative balance of $45,000.

Yet one type of debt that hasn't plagued low- and moderate-income families in recent decades is that tied to stock-market investing. The CBO report didn't even mention it. This is a notable departure from what happened in the 1920s, when reckless borrowing by plenty of mainstream Americans pushed up stock prices to overheated levels, contributing to the market crash of 1929 that ushered in the Great Depression.

That was a period when college education and even homeownership were off limits to large segments of the population, so not a lot of people borrowed for those purposes. But until the crash, it also was an era of optimism that saw the launch of popular new products like automobiles and telephones on a mass scale. Americans wanted shares in promising new companies and they often borrowed to get them.

"Ordinary men and women invested growing sums in stocks and bonds," the Federal Reserve recalls in an online history. "Margin accounts enabled ordinary people to purchase corporate equities with borrowed funds. Purchasers put down a fraction of the price, typically 10 percent, and borrowed the rest." When the market boom eventually turned to bust, millions of speculators got crushed.

Nothing like that scenario played out in the recession of 2007-2009. Roughly half of all Americans don't own any stock-market investments, and didn't at the time. Substantially fewer buy shares with borrowed funds, on margin.

Yet stock ownership, or the lack thereof, has contributed to the widening rich-poor divide in another way: Wealthier Americans, who largely stayed in the market, were in a position to profit when stocks began to recover starting in 2009. People of moderate means largely stayed on the sidelines, either voluntarily or by necessity, and missed that rebound opportunity.

Wealth remains socially awkward topic

The deVere Group, a British financial-advisory company, polled 830 high net worth people around the globe, of whom 43 percent ranked personal finance as the most difficult subject to discuss with family, friends and colleagues. That beat out politics (28 percent), sex (14 percent), religion (10 percent) and health issues (5 percent) in the survey of clients with investible assets of $1.3 million or more. Respondents live in the U.S., Britain, United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, Australia and South Africa.

However, this latest survey marks a notable change from a similar poll conducted two years ago, when 61 percent of high net worth clients cited money as the most difficult conversation topic.

The latest results suggest that feelings of embarrassment or guilt tied to wealth, especially among the affluent, might be eroding. This could reflect the reality that many business leaders, politicians, celebrities, professional athletes and others can't avoid having their finances discussed in the open, said deVere CEO Nigel Green. "The rise of the digital age and social media in particular, we believe, play an important part in this trend that is responsible for shifting the money taboo," he said.

More relaxed attitudes might be favorable anyway, as increased discussion of personal-finance issues could help people better achieve their goals and get better deals on financial transactions, Green said.

Fairly affluent can get medical care as retirees

The latest annual study by Fidelity Investments of expected health costs in retirement hit a new record, up 6 percent from last year's report. A married couple, with both spouses age 65 and retiring this year, would need $260,000 to cover anticipated medical expenses through retirement, assuming the husband lives to age 85 and the wife to 87, Fidelity estimates. That's up from $245,000 in the 2015 study.

These outlays cover Medicare premiums, co-payments and deductibles, along with out-of-pocket expenses for prescription drugs. They don't include dental costs or outlays for long-term-care assistance. Fidelity suggests couples should plan on spending another $130,000 to pay for a long-term-care insurance policy providing up to $8,000 in monthly benefits for up to three years.